The report says the new Echo speaker will work with Amazon's Alexa digital assistant — much like the current Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Tap speakers — but that the new touch screen could be used for quicker access to personal info, such as weather forecasts and calendar appointments.

It sounds like a fusion of the Echo and the popular Fire tablets the e-commerce giant sells today. It shouldn't be surprising then to hear that the new device will use an "optimized version" of Fire OS, Amazon's operating system for those tablets, according to Bloomberg.

Amazon released a software update in late October that brought Alexa to newer Fire tablets, though it's not yet clear if interacting with Alexa on this new speaker would work in a similar fashion.

Bloomberg says the device will "tilt upwards" — which would theoretically make it easier to touch if it were on, say, a counter or nightstand — and that it will use higher-quality speakers than the current Echo, which is often criticized for its audio quality (relative to other $180 speakers, at least).

Amazon

The report says this new device will cost more than the top-end Echo, though, and that it'll be announced in the first quarter of 2017.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Amazon was working on a "tablet-like" computer featuring Alexa, codenamed "Knight," which would be used to add a visual aspect to Alexa's audio smarts.

The Bloomberg report comes just a few weeks after Google released its own Echo competitor, the Google Home. Earlier this year, both The Information and Bloomberg reported that Apple was working on an Echo-esque smart home device as well. The Echo itself has been one of Amazon's few runaway hits in the hardware business.

All of this suggests that the digital-assistant race isn't slowing down anytime soon. Though we've found the actual smarts of these artificially intelligent helpers to be lacking, it seems clear that the major players in tech are pinning much of their hopes to them — and the internet of things — for the future.